A golf hustler tells his story

FIFTEEN years ago, Alan Howard Green came over to Estepona to spend two months making a bit of money hustling golfers before moving to Malaysia as a director of golf.

He is still here and rather than play golf professionally, he now has become a professional golf trader and the money he makes from that helps to top up the pension of this engaging and cheerful 71-year-old.

Every week, there is a televised golf tournament somewhere in the world which normally runs from Thursday to Sunday and this has been Alan’s bread and butter as he studies the course, the statistics and watches the players to spot those who are below par or nervous and he then decides by the last day, who is most likely to win.

He doesn’t get involved if a player is miles ahead of the competition as the odds are then so bad that there is no money to be made but if things are close, 90 per cent or more of the time, he can forecast who will win or even accept wagers from other traders if he thinks that a player is going to lose.

Having been involved with golf as a very successful amateur and then a professional, he has a very good grasp of the game and although he doesn’t invest large amounts of money in the trading, he invariably ends up ahead after each tournament.

For the first time in many years, he actually attended a tournament taking a very close friend and now publisher of his new book from Poland to see his first ever tournament, the Ladies Costa del Sol Open at the Real Club de Golf in Guadalmina.

Having led a very colourful life, he has amused friends and acquaintances with his anecdotes and it has often been suggested that he should write a book so when his friend Andrzej Jacaszek told him to do exactly that, he agreed but explained that he couldn’t afford to publish it.

Andrzej just happens to own the Ican Institute in Warsaw which publishes the Harvard Business Review in Poland, so Alan had no option but to sit down and write the book as he now had a publisher ready to go.

After two years, and 75,000 words If you haven’t gambled (You haven’t lived) has been released and in Alan’s own words “ It takes you on a journey of non-stop hustling, gambling, horses, casinos, sex, criminal activity and also the peaceful path of the world’s fairways.”

Although it is partly based on his experiences over the years, Alan has produced a novel which combines reality with his own wicked creative streak.

Now available on Amazon to download and in paper form, it has already received a number of good reviews and it has been decided by the author and publisher that any profits will be collected and given to a charity for underprivileged children.